Sunday, May 29, 2011

Ellen Degeneres Confirms Rumors, Lists Beverly Hills Compound

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Way back in mid-February 2011 Your Mama relayed the brewing real estate rumor that comedienne and chat show tycoon Ellen Degeneres and her equestrian-minded wife Portia deRossi-Degeneres wanted to unload the Beverly Hills, CA compound they spent years and many tens of millions putting together and customizing. In the summer of 2008 the a-list scissor sisters hitched their lesbian wagons in a small but perfectly orchestrated ceremony in the backyard of this here house.

By the end of April 2011, the whispers and rumors of MizDegeneres's desire to unload her large estate in Bev Hills became deafening and just now, at the end of May, the property was semi-officially put on the open market. A listing does not (as of today) appear in the MLS or an any of the other real estate listing aggregators like Redfin and Trulia but one did pop up on the website of listing agent Kurt Rappaport of the illustrious Westside Estate Agency. That listing shows the price for Miz D's digs as "available upon request."

Several sources have shimmied (alleged) asking prices our way over the last few months but one particularly well-placed informant snitched and swears to Your Mama that the asking price(s) being bandied about Beverly Hills are $49,000,000 for the the main house–plus separate guest and staff quarters and extensive grounds–and $60,000,000 for the entire kit and caboodle that includes the main house–plus separate guest and staff quarters and extensive grounds–and the two additional houses on adjacent parcels that MizDegeneres and Missus deRossi-Degeneres also purchased to further secure and preserve their privacy.

The center piece of the compound, which she bought in early 2007 from Will & Grace co-creator Max Mutchnick for $29,000,000, includes an approximately 9,000 square foot main house with extensive outdoor living areas plus a detached guest house. Your Mama understands from several little birdies who have visited the property for one reason or another that the main house includes a kick-ass master suite with extensive dressing area and two more guest/family bedrooms each with en suite facility and each with private nudity-encouraging sunbathing terrace.

The detached guest house has two en suite bedrooms plus living/dining and kitchen. Additional space under the swimming pool–yes, children, under the swimming pool–includes high-tech fitness/body torture chamber, a well-appointed one-bedroom staff suite and underground garage space for 8 or 10 of MizDegeneres's many Porsches, as opposed to her lone Portia who, we imagine, parks in the house and not the garage. Access to the areas under the swimming pool are by way of an all but hidden staircase behind the all-wood pool cabana.

The following January (2008), the privacy-seeking pair paid Beverly Hills real estate über-agent Jade Mills $8,500,000 for an undistinguished house just across a cramped and shared driveway. Miz Mills owned buy did not occupy the premises. Soon after closing on Miz Mill's rental residence, MizDegeneres got behind the wheel of a bulldozer herself and knocked the damn house down to make way for expanded grounds now done up like an honest-to-goodness private park with meandering pond and soothing canyon views.

In June of 2008 the property mad pair paid another $5,000,000 to purchase a third contiguous property, this one with a down-at-the-heels 1 bedroom and 3 bathroom house with canyon views. One month later they splashed out another $5,500,000 to acquire yet another adjacent property, this one a 4 bedroom and 4 bathroom house perched on a hillside at the back of the house. Apparently, we've been told, the residents had some sort of visual access to the property that irked MizDegeneres and Missus deRossi-Degeneres to the tune of five and a half million George Washingtons.

If Your Mama works the beads on our bejeweled abacus and add up all the many above-mentioned purchase prices we conclude that MizDegeneres and her wife spent $48,000,000 (or thereabouts) to create their own private Idaho in the heart of Beverly Hills only to decide a few years later that they no longer want to live there. How y'all like them apples? Such, as we well know, are the fickle real estate ways of rich and famous folks.

The recent sale of high society matron Iris Cantor's La Belle Vie in Bel Air for forty million–in cash–and the rumored $35,000,000+ allegedly-soon-to-be-sale of Jennifer Aniston'sOhana–her contemporary mansion in Beverly Hills listed at $42,000,0000–surely have MizDegeneres and Missus deRossi-Degeneres salivating with real estate hope and desire. But, let's be honest, monfreres. The forty million clams Miz Cantor hoovered up is a long way from the 49 and 60 million MizDegeneres is widely whispered to want for her super-luxe and carefully-crafted estate.

Although plagued by a famous and incurable case of The Real Estate Fickle, it must also soothe MizDegeneres's nervous pocketbook to recognize that she has a fairly good and profitable track record of buying and selling high-priced and high-maintenance houses. She bought and sold several ranches in the Santa Ynez Valley at tidy profits and in early 2006 she paid $15,750,000 for an historic house in Montecito, CA that she turned around and sold in November 2007 to Google CEO Eric Schmidt for $20,000,000.

Anyone care to wager their real estate reputation on what amount the property might actually sell? Your Mama will attempt no such folly, but those of the children who might should know that according the Bev Hills real estate insiders the property has attracted a fair amount of attention amongst the sort of folks who can afford and might be willing to cough up considerable cookies for a substantial estate in one of the better zip codes in Los Angeles.

In addition to their maxi-posh but no-longer-wanted compound in Beverly Hills MizDegeneres and Missus deRossi-Degeneres also own a small apartment in Beverly Hills–acquired in late 2010 for $835,000, presumably for staff or family–and an extensive equestrian complex in the scenic boondocks outside Westlake Village, CA they snatched up in late 2009 for about ten million buckaroonies.

58 comments:

Well, the market that started slipping in 2007 when they bought this is still sliding in 2011 so I don't understand how they figure the original portion that they paid too much for to begin with has increased $20MM in value. There are only so many Russian oligarchs for whom money is no object to go around.

That said, I've always loved the upper left aerial photo of this estate. This is the first I've glimpsed the interior and am underwhelmed by what I can see thus far. It's not what I expected it to be like at all, but the outdoor living areas are marvelous.

Please.......don't anyone even whisper to our Mama that is should be mes freres but I can't even make the computer do accents. There has been too much kerfuffle about inaccuracies recently. Now I want to know where this talented lady is taking all of her Porschias....I suspect she might be building an island off the coast of Malibu just to tweak the establishment. Dance on Ellen DeG!

Snowman, I'm with you -- Mama turns such a good phrase with such wit and sass that I don't give a hoot that she doesn't always properly conjugate her French verbs. She's doing a hell of a lot better than me with two years of French finished 20 years ago.

I'll never understand what drives Ellen and her real estate, but she does pretty well at it. Dance on indeed!

I really find this gluttonous self-indulgence quite revolting. It gives money a bad name. The US desperately needs taxes raised on the super rich. And raised a lot, for decency's sake. Maybe a 15% sales tax on real estate over 5 or 10 million would be the way to go. If she sells it for 60 million, she pays a tax of 9 million.

I agree with 11:40pm that this is “gluttonous self-indulgence.” I prefer when people who have money are more humble about it. Just looking at her “compound” makes me tired…all the maintenance, money being paid to maintain all of this when there are so many people in the world who can’t find jobs. I don’t see the reason Ellen and Portia need all of this property. I guess when celebs hit the big time, they spend, spend, spend. I hope she is saving money because the entertainment industry is so fickle. I like Ellen and Portia a lot, respect their talents and wish them the best.

I think she'll get close to her asking price. There aren't too many estates with that level of privacy available & it's certainly more bang for the buck than Aniston's pile. Perhaps Oprah might be interested.

Would that I had the money to indulge in such a hobby ––– buying, consolidating, infusing with a vision and then moving on...

Why is it so hard to believe that in the rarefied atmosphere where the buyers & sellers of such properties respirate that this is a bad thing? Sure, it may seem like vulgar self-indulgence to some, but it seems, to me, that there are much worse ways to make such astronomical sums work for you. Once you can wrap your mind around any single human having such wherewithal (and there always will be haves & have-nots), passing any kind of moral judgment can easily place you on a very slippery slope.

Unlike some other properties around the world that are demonstrably ugly and unlivable (certain properties in Texas & Georgia with faux-frenchified names spring readily to mind, with a Belle-this and Beau-that), these lovely lady-luvin' ladies have shown time & time again that the subtle manipulation of architectural space is & has always been, since man first vacated the cave for the domicile, not only an admirable skill but, in very few instances (and I would NOT argue this is one of them, lovely as it is) a noble pursuit? Endeavoring to create has given mankind a very rich artistic heritage. Think of all those who yearn to create that were sponsored by a patron...provided with a means to live by being employed by folks like these.

I'm sure we've all seen that T-shirt emblazoned with "Please God, give me the chance to prove that winning the lottery won't spoil me..." in nearly every strip mall in America; conjuring up a setting like this is the way I'd like to go. Not everyone truly aspires to be another Mother Teresa, but many seek to leave some mark behind them.

As for the final asking price? I think that there's got to be at least one MCM lover with the pockets deep enough to cough up $52MM for the entire compound.

Get a room!...................at Ellen's maybe. LGB has raised the bar in what I think has been a renaissance of good comments over the past few months. One can only hope that the increase in activities in these high end digs will continue.

Seriously, it seems to me to be bleeding obvious ––– would money be better spent on improving social welfare, protecting our children or helping the needy?

Yes, of course. Duh...

But the pursuit of art is on a higher plane, and as such is noble indeed; not everyone who struggles to create is a da Vinci or a Frank Lloyd Wright ––– but is seems to me that that the nobility lies in the attempt, not necessarily the achievement.

Who can say that there is not right now a soul out there who will gaze upon this particular attempt and not be inspired to someday create something upon a scale of the next Fallingwater or Mona Lisa? What moves an individual soul?

Art enriches the human spirit and thus belongs freely to all alike; to me, that is the miracle of creation.

I would posit that in the attempt to create an artistic space, the Missus Degeneres' reach for that nobility with a practiced eye (and not to the exclusion of those in need).

Lil' Gay Boy: On the "slippery slope" to generosity and humanity, perhaps? On the slope to giving generously to charity to help the really unlucky and unfortunate? I do marvel at the way plutocratic propaganda has infected so many minds and, well, rotted them so there is no moral sense left or somethin' like that.

So, 10:43, to qualify for your "moral sense" Ellen DeGeneres should give to charity everything she has above what your own living standard is. I think not. I don't know, and I doubt that you know, how much she gives or what she does for others. If seeing an enormous and costly personal residence ignites your sense of indignation, I say too bad. An unbridled sense of entitlement also infects and rots. I don't feel that everone who has more than I do should give me some. Ellen didn't sell orphan kidneys to build this place. She entertained people and the market rewarded her.

Annie Rand I have to say I find your attitude symptomatic of what is very wrong with the USA today. A nation with the highest Gini index among the developed nations. Extremes of wealth and poverty; millions barely scraping by; and ridiculously low taxes on the super rich. 18% rate in fact for the Forbes 400. But the plutocrats have the money to buy the best propaganda and it does seem to work on a lot of brainsAre you super rich or just a dupe of the group?

I like the yard as I have many pets..But I dont think the inside was great at all..Id say the land if worth one million and then level the place and build a beaustifull house like the one Ms Iris cantor just sold- now thats a beautifull home, this looks like a hodge pode of add-ONS!loveBobby Trendy

Anonymous 7:16 Well, I am not anonymous. I believe that hard work and talent should bring all sorts of rewards and that laziness and merely drawing breath should not. I will work hard to craft a quality pitchfork for you to pick up, or preferably purchase, and carry in anger toward the evil rich devil's castle. I am well off but not wealthy. I pay 38 percent in taxes, give to charity, volunteer and resent vapid criticism. I also love realestate porn and am delighted that these places exist, even though I cannot afford them. I loathe the idea of everyone being the same, being taken care of by the state and soviet industrial art. Other than that, we are probably pretty much alike. There is a certain selfish virtue to damning those better off than yourself or even Fiona Trambeau....but you know that.

LGB: You have the nauseating, overstuffed, and smug pretentiousness so typical of aself-regarding philistine who easily basks in the apocalyptic and cataclysmic greed that reigns supreme within the homes of these petit-bourgeois hacks...your words clot these pages like the sickly-sweet smoke of a pendant's stinkingclove cigarette.

Submit your eloquent manifesto of aspirational aesthetics to the homeless...I'm sure they'll appreciate it by using it as very useful toilet tissue.

I will spend this beautiful first day of June waiting for my statue of LGB to sprout stigmata. I can only marvel at how his insightful and entertaining comments here have sparked rage in Anonymous 5:09. I have not read anything this vituperous since the reviews of the movie "Sahara." Rock on Chillun'!

There's a lot of land and just plain stuff that is being sold in addition to the house itself. Still, you have to be a fan of "mid century modern" architecture to appreciate a house that looks like my old elementary school (on the outside).

Due to market conditions and the uniqueness of the "compound" (which is not a selling point, IMHO) my prediction is not a dime over $40,000,000.

What makes me puke is what these so-called celebs are paid. I am a believer in the capitalist system, but it's the society that decides who gets paid what in this country, and it shows that people who deserve better, like teachers and nannies, get paid piteously compared to celebs. If you all watch their shows, see their movies, you are the reason they have so much. All you have to do is stop it, and you can control these excesses for certain people.

Good luck selling this ill defined hot mess! Looks more like a cross between the Getty Villa meets modern boutique hotel, than a livable home.

And what would the property taxes and insurance be on a 60 million pad? Ouch! Not to many people are willing to eat that much money on declining real estate. Even the ones with huge egos and no brains!

I'm guessing it will be worth about 8-10 mil in a few years at the rate things are falling.

Hurry up and dump it or you will loose all that money made in real estate in SB.

I'm pretty sure that JA & JT are going to buy this place, the privacy thing alone in BH is fantastic. And it's a lovely mid-century modern home, not my taste, but we've seen Aniston's taste and she loves that.

I believe she's going to buy this and the end price will be $48/$49m - WITH all the trimmings. The RE market is slow, and I'm willing to bet that JA is the only person that wants this property.

The good thing is all the other homes in this property! Knowing what JA did to the other home she will make this home up to green standards - a wise decision & live in the other properties.